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Thursday, January 17, 2019

It's always a bit odd to do something you feel completely competent in after a short hiatus from the activity. For example, driving an automobile yesterday after spending two weeks in Peru where the only transportation I was in command of were my feet and a motor-scooter (for one day). We encounter "different" experiences all of the time however, our societal recalcitrance allow the experiences to push us back into our comfort zone before learning anything - unless that comfort zone has been shredded like a Banksy painting.

As I headed out to the chiropractor to get some of the hours spent sleeping in diminutive beds and airplane seats released, I noticed a stark contrast between my current mental state vs when I was navigating the roads and traffic in Peru on the scooter. No, shit Sherlock, right? It's a mini-van vs a 150cc scooter, of course it's a different experience; however, while related with the type of vehicle being operated, there were also the traffic flow and road surfaces that made the experience different. The "Western world" has gone above and beyond in the pursuit of comfort and ease. Just watch a car commercial and you'll see the intangibles they are peddling - power, safety, comfort, freedom, prestige. Externals filling in the gaps perceived in the wall of our personal fortress against the outside world. Switchfoot has a great line in the song Gone - "outside of our convenient Lexus cages", a quite accurate depiction of our mentality. Societally, we have accepted that we are all separate entities milling about this "third rock from the sun", each trying to create an all encompassing garrison wherein "things" can stay just as we like them. However, the walls that are supposed to keep us safe can just as easily be a prison.

When you are driving down a potholed dirt road littered with puddles of unknown depths or through traffic with little regard for lighted signals and none for stop signs, you have to become hyper-focused. Obviously it's not the same level as Formula One racing but I felt a glimmer of the description I had once read of the occupation - a complete immersion and presence with the road and vehicle as if "you" and "they" (the road, elements, vehicle etc) are one. There is no thinking about what is for dinner later, the bank account balance, whether or not your relationship is going to work - it is only single minded focus on the data screaming through you that must be traversed to reach the destination that was the focus the entire time. Operating a fully enclosed tin / plastic can in the United States stuck me as very much the opposite of this fully immersed experience. Even our expectation of others following traffic laws is another way we hide from the present. This is not to imply that traffic laws should be chucked but because they are in place, many drivers feel that they can detach from monitoring the pulse of the moment to run away into something else "more productive - formulating a plan for the future, listening to a podcast, talking on the phone etc.

Much of the "necessities of life" are considered drudgery to "civilized folks" so our "technologically advanced" society has, to quote many advertising schemes over the years, "we've worked hard so that you won't have to". Of course you end up paying your hard earned money so that you won't have to keep working hard, only to then have a new problem - what to do with yourself. These days filling "empty" time is as easy as flipping on a device and binging some online streaming content or hanging out at a bar for hours to watch other people do things on the television. None of this is meant to imply that these activities are wrong but merely to point out the fact that we do things we don't enjoy to procure money that is supposed to then create the space of ease or more accurately - allow us to be a version of present, where our sense are overloaded with input that overwhelms the foreboding fallacy we call the Future. Ironically, we want to do nothing and have attempted to create a world devoid of labor yet when we have nothing to do we become anxious and desire to fill that space.

Instead of driving out of the present moment we can each embrace the wonder that is contained in being. In this state you aren't striving for ideas of perfection but instead are doing whatever comes naturally in that flow. Doing not for the sake of a "outcome" but purely out of interest and excitement in what you are doing. I imagine that if bees have thoughts like us there are some that see everyday of pollen gathering as a horrible grind, while others might see it as an exciting treasure hunt to tasty treats traversed on the marvelous mechanics of their wings. Everything is a choice of perspective - there is surrender or there is not. The lack of surrender is where all the cacophony of opinions clashing in the world are derived from. As a friend put it "having an opinion is not a skill". Opinions are entirely a mental construction formulated through one's ego stating it's belief on how it can best self preserve hoping to gain energy, and therefore "security", through swaying others to see the world as it does.

Denzel Washington in Equalizer 2 has a fantastic scene where he's cleaning graffiti off a wall in his apartment complex and has a conversation with a young man who tells Mr. McCall "someone else should be doing that". Robert (McCall), responds with one of the most direct and powerful monologues I've seen. I don't have the exact quote but the bones of it is "all the time people spend talking about what 'should' happen, they could have been doing something about it". The sign in front of a plant has no bearing on what it is going to become and is really only potentially confusing to those who have to read signs to "know".

Thursday, November 8, 2018

I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but as soon as I wrote the words down they had to be erased.
Full off the script I keep shoving in my face, I’m eating these lines like a fat kid at a golden corral buffet.

The arrogance apparent, parroting parents till the echos rebounding have faded to transparent.
I’m staring into a pool, the general mish-mash, it’s surface like my mind, sometimes still, sometimes thrashed.

It’s all me, every single problem I see, reflecting the chaos I haven’t set free.
Was blinded by lies though I sincerely believed, angry with the labels others slapped on me.

Till one day I stepped out, saw from the outside, a fourth dimensional perspective - I’m already what I am, no more reason to hide.
Which came first, the seed or the tree? Both - everything is existing simultaneously.

Judged by the fruit, not the name on the seed, words are only useful to constrain the be-ing.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

“Love is the answer” - Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. I have zero argument with the man but the statement doesn’t clear the issue up considerably. It’s more like being in a DMZ lacking terms of engagement. I'm new to saying “I love you” to people outside of my children and partner because I'd been concerned that another’s definition of love would open me up to an entire set of expectations to which I wasn’t privy. It’s kind of like when someone says “I want to tell you something but you first have to promise never to tell anyone”. You don’t want to agree because you have no idea what it is you might become party to. Then there is the phrase “if you loved me you would...” - one of the most abused string of words by manipulative individuals because it asserts their self-serving view as the truth. Lack of definition and improper assertion of the true face of love have made many choose to shut down the expression of it in their life.

Is there a character of love that everyone can agree on or is it up for interpretation? Obviously that’s an unanswerable question because love is an idea. However, if I were to take a crack at it I would say this - Love is simply recognizing everything as a reflection of you. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to say “no” or allow someone (including “yourself”) to “fail”, while other times a word of encouragement or helping hand are for the highest good. There isn’t a rule book; there is only treating others as if they were you - what some people call the Golden Rule. That is a love without anything to fear, unless you are afraid of yourself.

No past perception based limitations,
Preoccupations or passive aggressions,
You’re irrecoverably relatively / off of the clock,
Irreverently eating green eggs and ham with a relative fox,
Relatively outside of Some Thing’s box.

Gravely it’s a shame,
these grave digging robbers hitting their own gravy trains.
Higher prophets for the highest profits - pump and dump for short term gains.
Preaching doom and gloom,
No long term remainders can remain,
Reminders of the point at which imperfection was detained -
Rounded up,
Eliminated, scrubbed -
The Nothings pile up;
Plucking up a reckoning fashioned from leaving none / but your own blood to suck.

When you are nothing you are everything which is something:
but it’s transitory,
based on a story,
written in blood.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

When I was young (which increasingly feels like yesterday) I was under the impression that humans were supposed to be "in control" of their lives and through effort maintain that life till the end. The more I experience, the more I question how much control each of us has over anything. Do we even choose the thoughts that come into our minds or is it merely where we direct our attention which through repetition wears a groove for energy to drop into making that "line of thinking" "second nature" or "subconscious"?

Persistent attention forms natural actions which further wear the groove. A thought obsessed upon with no outlet is like pumping water into a reservoir till it overflows or the dam breaks. Energy always ends up taking the path of least resistance which is why "negative" or "positive" actions are self-reinforcing. Perception of reality is constrained by the sides of the canyon the river of time is flowing through. Altering the state of consciousness through various means breaks the normal state of flow allowing a vision into a more natural way of being, one that is outside of the engrained programming of personal history.

If most action is the natural outlet of energy from perseverating on a thought or idea, perhaps the best actions are the thoughtless ones. Thoughtless meaning: no desire for a specific outcome. We despise the impermanence of life due to the permanence of the changes. Pain is thought to help keep our corpus intact but that pain would likely be ignored if there were an inbuilt regeneration system to restore the status quo. The bulk of our fear of the future is because we do not know if we will regenerate what we perceive is being lost in the passage of time. No matter how hard you try, nothing can be recreated - the same experience had twice. Despite getting everything environmentally to "match", the Observer - you, is not the same for having already previously had the experience. The only way this could be accomplished would be to perform a memory wipe and program your consciousness with the entire sequence up till the point you wish to repeat. Notwithstanding, the highly improbable but necessary rewinding of the entire universe to repeat an event, what would be the point if you didn't remember having repeated it? Without a change in that cycle you end up stuck in "groundhog day", or as some might call it - hell.

Save for experiencing the infinitely knowable yet ultimately inscrutable flow of life, there isn't a point. That's what impermanence is for - having an experience, not something to strive for mastery over and subdue. Everything has cycles to necessitate the illusion of time. The only thing that is intrinsically you is the intangible essence of your perception. You don't ever die or become reborn, you just move between vehicles.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

I've spent most of my life seeking and consequently most of my life rather unhappy. Seeking is proportional to madness because it is predicated on a lie - there is something I'm lacking. "Enlightenment" is seen by many as the righteous opposite to seeking the external aka materialism and is therefore a "better way". However, from my experience (key word "my"), most people seeking internally are as miserable as those seeking fulfillment externally but they boost their ego by thinking "at least I'm trying to do the right thing". When I say "they" I include myself in that because I have had those thoughts.

I was fed up with my career and society as a whole so the end of last year I told everyone I was done with the film business. I wanted to do something that "mattered". This February I found myself back in the Peruvian jungle. My intention was to get involved with permaculture work in the jungle and hopefully that would somehow open some doors. "At least I'll be helping the planet" I thought self righteously. Sitting chatting on the day I arrived with the friends I would be helping out, I felt a very strong impression from Pacha Mama. We had been talking about the eco-crisis in the jungle and world at large when I thought "this is why I'm here, what can I do to stop this?" I began to feel powerless and a little angry when suddenly I heard "I don't need your help. I could shake you off any time I want to but there is always a bigger system than the one you see. Most of those obsessed with protecting me are doing so because they need to have a righteous cause to identify with. You're job is to live as responsibly as you can and not concern yourself with trying to save me." I was thrown for a huge loop. Why was I here then???

My friends were building a small, simple jungle house a few hundred meters down the road from their agriculture eco project and beliving I had construction experience I offered to help. I ended up building a concrete countertop which took the better part of the month due to most everything having to be cut by hand and using an assortment of reclaimed lumber for the form. The building site was 4km from the edge of town (about 6.5km to the center) so it was sufficiently in the jungle to provide much time alone. Sometimes I would walk (or eventually ride my bike) to town in the evening but even being around people, I was alone. My Spanish was having a hard time improving due to not interacting with many people and for the first couple weeks I felt like I had suddenly become stupid. I knew I wasn't but it still was humbling and made the wall of my own thoughts much more apparent. So many things went through my mind as I worked on the form but the main points are as follows: The universe is much bigger than you and doesn't care how you expect it to act. There's nothing to figure out, just be. The only thing you control is your attention.

Before I arrived in Peru this second time, I thought I knew things. I had come to understand that I don't know much in the scope of life but I still thought I knew how to pour concrete for instance. The mix and drying time in the jungle are significantly different than I was used to. Everything truly is relative and knowledge is specific to certain parameters. I thought I was a hard worker but discovered really it's largely due to the fact that I grew up where the temperature and humidity weren't oppressive most of the year. All the things we consider as us and hold with pride or shame are all bullshit. They're a bunch of environmental conditions that we have chosen to hold on to. Sometimes the universe says "I know you don't mean to be, but you're kind of an asshole", or it did to me. Our technology and machinery have separated us from the earth to where we feel an illusory mastery over her. However, when you step back from all that we've created and experience yourself against the backdrop of nature - you realize how insignificant each of us and our problems are. Does human civilization matter to anyone but humans? I highly doubt any portion of the animal kingdom would miss us but yet we continue to seek and destroy. It might sound odd but feeling my place in things was rather comforting. I didn’t have to take all the pressures of figuring it, whatever "it" is, out.

Upon returning home I still felt a lot of peace and contentment but as things from the frantic society of the United States have begun to press in, I've found myself seeking once again and proportionally unhappy. The "civilized" world is so out of touch due to it's own detached arrogance that we heap piles of should onto others and ourselves as if we are in control. We hope to change the future and therefore ameliorate the past all the while living in a vortex of hellish judgement.

The lie / mantra of seekers says: you are separated from xyz and you won't be whole without it. That could be "god" due to some kind of sin (sin only means without) or maybe it's a feeling like being loved; regardless of the situation, something is wrong and the I feels the need to fix it. The unhappiness that drives seeking is based purely in a belief system, not something real. I, the Ego, self - all are constructs of a string of memories that you have chosen to accept as truth. It’s a closed loop that is incapable of growth because growth naturally sheds. Let me prove to you that for separation to have power, it requires a closed system. The greater your separation, the larger / more desperate the need. Three illustrations follow:

1. Raise a bowling ball 10 meters off the ground and it will leave a dent in the earth. Drop the same bowling ball from two miles and it will go right through a house. Now, break free of the earths gravity and the same ball floats around rather innocuously.

2. Charge a capacitor and then separate the plates, the voltage rises proportional to the distance. This is voltage (also called potential) could theoretically be increased infinitely however at some point the charge would bleed off because just like the bowling ball, eventually one of the parties leaves the system and breaks the bond dissipating the charge.

You travel abroad and meet a lover whom you pine for upon your return home. Quite out of nowhere you now follow the news about their home country, a place perhaps you never cared about before - watch and cheer for their sports etc. Six months, a year goes by and suddenly you meet someone locally - the charge is sapped off so to speak. All energy takes the path of least resistance and is always looking for a ground / balanced state.

Conditioning feels true until you are outside the insulation of the system where the built up charge can suddenly dissipate upon coming in contact with the proper grounding incident. That could be a person, an event or simply just a thought that happens to float through your head one day but what triggers it is unimportant. The key is that it's all just a matter of being stuck in a belief system that is a feedback loop. It screeches so loudly that everything contradictory is drowned out. Unplugging the speakers and listening to the silence for a bit is a good metaphorical way to start.

Many people will say that they "believe in the impossible" meaning "supernatural" or "paranormal" events but the language betrays an unwitting condescension and statement of the actual state of their belief system. Many of the English words used in to describe are based in what I would call "disempowering beliefs". Take "limitless" - to be without limit. That is predicated on the idea of what a limit is. Saying "whole" is different than using the word "unbroken", sure it's a nuance but it still means something. If you didn't have any words, you would have very few thoughts so the words you use have a lot to do with the way you think and perceive life. Do you believe in the impossible or that all things are equally as possible? It's not that you can have the concept of whole without the concept of broken, the point is where is your focus.

I realized that if I say "I feel lost" that implies there is somewhere I think I should be other than where I am. It's not about going on a witch hunt but more about being conscious of the program you are running, deleting it one line at a time with your actual truth, not the bullshit that you were told was the truth for everyone. There is no seeking, all things are accessible right now because all of time and space are connected and non-linear. What we seek (or run from) never is a thing but only an idea that persists for as long as we give it our attention.

At some point in the writing history of this website, I believe I wrote a post extolling the benefits of asking the simple question "why?". I can’t be bothered to search through them all to be certain, but regardless of whether I wrote about it or not, I believed it and now it’s time to recant. I thought that it was the key to figuring out life and personal growth because with sufficient repetition you could unravel any problem. What I would like to submit now is that end of childhood begins with the asking of "why?" They don’t come programmed with words so it’s something that they learn, most likely because they are asked "why did you do that?" usually before being punished. This teaches them to begin defining reality in causal constructs which most people view as a good thing. However, the learned cause and effect is only relevant in a specific system so questioning the "why" of anything is ultimately only fencing you more inside your mind. About the only real answer to the question "why?" is "because you believe it to be". Yesterday I felt like doing something but then the mind jumped in and asked "why? Why do you want to do that?" It wasn’t like the morality was really questionable on anyone’s standards but more of a "what’s the point?" That’s when this change of perspective regarding "why" happened. I’ve seen a lot of things in life both "spiritual" and "material" that didn’t seem to be what they claimed and consequently developed a rather ridged control over "what I believed". I thought being a non-aggressive skeptic was smart, wise, perhaps even good but now I’ve found it to be arrogance and condescension based in fear. Ego, science, religion, history - all are the past intruding on the present, creating the "future": a set of possibilities limited only by your beliefs.

Inside a LCD (liquid crystal display, what you are probably reading this on now) are several layers of material that convert a stream of information into an image. An over simplification of the device follows: back light, polarizer (5), lcd element (2), polarizer (1. 90° relative to first). The two polarizers block all the light from the back light due to the interference pattern (like pickets in a fence).

When electricity is applied to segments of the liquid crystals, they change their angle of orientation creating a conduit allowing light to pass. (If you want to dig into light polarization further check out this video on Bells Theorem). Essentially, the angle of the crystal defines the possibilities coming out the other side. Screen savers were developed because old CRTs would get "screen burn" where the phosphorus coating would be permanently etched if one image remained for too long. LCD's have a similar issue called "image persistence" where the crystals have a predilection towards the persistent alignment. Image persistence is generally correctable through a couple simple methods: 1. Power down the monitor for an extended period of time. 2. Use a screen saver that is essentially a pixel wipe. 3. Set the entire screen to one color to reset all the crystals. Why am I still talking about imaging technology? It’s all an analogy. We are made of fluididity, vibration, change - our only definition comes from who we believe ourselves to be. The mind is the liquid crystal with the polarizers of society only passing through what our conditioned beliefs permit.

Imagine the entirety of the universe being a single conscious photon. The only way for it to experience anything would be through reflection. No two beings have the same experience of you as you. We are all mutually reflective of god experiencing itself infinite ways through these forms. As perfect and whole as we believe it to be.

Only a heart and mind that do not wish: to define, confine, unravel the divine - simply accepting it is all around, will find the end of seeking intersects with infinity.